History, doctrine, culture, books

The Busy Bloggernacle

I was offline for five days last week -- no Internet, no email, no Yahoo. How did people live like this? Anyway, when I finally accessed my Google Reader there were 100+ posts in my "Bloggernacle" queue. Granted, 90% of it is trash, but, as writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, 90% of everything is trash. It's that other 10% that makes the world turn. So what'd I miss? What happened in the Bloggernacle this week?

Got an email from someone promoting the latest LDS spoof site: Bishop Higgins 3rd Ward. I can't tell whether the author left off the apostrophe as part of the game or whether he's just illiterate. Smells like Banner of Heaven to me.

Two new permabloggers out there: Natalie Brown joins BCC (once again sporting that bizarre landscape banner) and ECS joins FMH. It's scary how good the new perms are. Glad I got into the game early.

And then there was that 10% I referred to up top. I keep a running list in my "B'nacle Highlights" list about four clicks down the first sidebar, which is just the items in my Google Reader that I mark "share," or a full-text page of those posts via the Bloggernacle Highlights link at the top of the sidebar. I hated readers until I tried the Google Reader, which is odd because I don't especially like the Google email interface. Anyway, here are three links from the list:

FitM posts on his/her (?) strange encounter with FMH, noting that "many of them have a lot of interesting things to say," but pegging some of the regulars with the quip, "Round hole, meet the square peg."

Jacob, I'm using the term "trash" loosely, of course. We might term the 10% "gems" and the 90% "largely forgettable." And the labels apply to posts, not people. Everyone puts up a gem here or there, along with the routine and forgettable stuff.

Google Reader is an aggregator that works sort of like an email inbox. If you have a Google account, you can set up the reader to gather RSS feeds (such as from weblogs) and display the current posts from all the selected feeds in one "inbox," by title or with an excerpt, for quick review and reading. I find it to be very handy.

Mormon Books 2013-14

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review